So after trying too many systems that all have too many missing pieces for our needs i have decided we should build our own management server. What am i talking about you ask i am talking about the digital heart of our organization. The billing system mostly works, the integration kinda works, mobile apps are being built.... These systems have served us as best they could so far but to be truly useful they need to do more.

So what is this project, blue sky is a design to integrate everything possible into a flexible code framework that we can tune to our current and future needs. I have lots of ideas on how it could go together but lack the code skills to put it together. The end goal for me on this is to have a functioning system that works very well for us but that can also be tweaked for other maker spaces and helping those that may not have the expertise.

This is the list of what i think it should do but i am opening it up to suggestions.

I've been toying on and off over the last few years with a setup that combines Joomla (web site framework with many modules for just about anything) with vtiger (a crm that can track customer / donnors, track campaigns, do email tracking, has a ticketing system (trouble ticket, I'd have to check on event ticketing), etc) I've thought it would be a great thing to have as a one stop web / emart / crm for makers or other small businesses that want all the cool features, but don't want to build it all themselves, the idea being it's a hosted multi-tenant setup, and has minimal costs.

These are both open-source projects with pretty long histories and communities supporting them. They are also both PHP based.

The Dallas Makerspace has developed an open source voting system that we've used for voting on our bylaws and BOD that may be useful. It's hosted on github, but I can't find it this second.

Turn key linux has an interesting concept of releasing a virtual machine with preconfigured applications for a specific usage. It would be cool to co-maintain a distribution with other hackerspaces, for hackerspaces, with relevant tools and applications that make management easier.

by coms i mean having the ability for people to sign up for say our newsletter (ork is restarting that) via email, or link on twitter, or sms, or facebook, whatever your preferred info hole is for each sort of communication

project tracking both for stuff in progress and things to fix (i.e. thickness planer needs new gears --more info blah blah) as well as member and group project documentation. log in, upload pics (with mobile app) add text, boom, instant how to record, add a short blog post.